What's some cool details I could include about a massive metropolitan mega city that's now an abandoned and creepy...

what's some cool details I could include about a massive metropolitan mega city that's now an abandoned and creepy necropolis?

I'm talking small details, large details and origins for this thing. Something unique

Part of desolation and decay is sense of foreboding, of not knowing necessarily what happened. Maybe academically you know why, but the city offers details of the how.

Imagine the last days of a city dweller, and what they did. Did they flee? or did they hunker down in place? Did a stuffed animal wind up somewhere unique, and now it is decayed almost beyond recognition? Did rats knock it over or chew on it? You have got to imagine the decay for yourself, the process, the samsara, and pluck details from that.

Or you cop details from ruinporn pics while listening to dark ambient.

Idk, but I'd recommend reading the first 50 or so pages of The Sorcerer's Nephew if you're looking for inspiration, I remember the empty city in a dying world that appears there to be pretty haunting

some flooded sections

I think reading a bit about Pompeii might be good

Talking about flooded cities, something that really helped to set the mood in New Londo Ruins was the piles of corpses you find close to the gates, after you drain the water.

Surprise your players, OP. Dont' treat it necessarily as the shittiest and gloomiest place on Earth.

Maybe the dwellers can have quite large homes, in their relatevely safe quarter of the city.
Maybe they grow gardens in the abandoned building.
Maybe the necropolis is somehow possible to travel in: at certain hours/days?

Maybe the ghost of the ancestors like their successors, if they respect them.

Servants passages, little side routes between shops and the main storage areas, and big ass water filtration systems/reservoirs

I'm all about adding "layers of history," especially in a setting and in seemingly abandoned locales especially. Things like remnants of people that managed to survive the original cataclysmic event, for a while, and evidence of previous explorers and the terrible fates that befell them.

Yeah, Charn was pretty rad.

A place or part of the ruins being totally barren could be good for a bit of creep factor - if there's absolutely nothing growing, nothing living there at all.
Like the area has just been totally made sterile.

Poisonous areas and areas of weirdness can do something similar, but more overtly dangerous than creepy

Possibly as a result of war or the catastrophe that killed the city

>big ass water filtration systems/reservoirs
These are also good - dried up canals, deep cisterns whose roofs have cracked and opened them to the sky, aqueducts that cross the city and have collapsed sections - things that suggest, even more than the size of the place, that a ton of people lived there

Offer contradictory explanations for it's origins and downfall.


Make it look like there's something alive there with them or some other spooky stuff going on

Horror works best when it's got a lot of mystery too it

Make it mazelike in a weird way.
Like, it' really hard to find your way around it.
Almost like if things and ways changed places every once in a while.
Have the ghosts of it's former inhabitants reviving their last day forever, unable to realise they are already dead.
Put a few weird details to get your player's imaginarions running wild. Maybe sections of the ground are melted and fused.
Maybe the town square is full of statues. Maybe all shadows are forever engraved on the surfaces.
Have a few survivors, or maybe bandits use it as a hiddenout, maybe caravans stop by... Make your players be never completely sure if they are truly alone.

Make it a really nice place during the day, like it makes you wonder why it was abandoned in the first place with they way the sun is shining and the breeze feels just right.

If you want to creep your players out just keep quietly rolling dice with out saying anything or revealing the results every once in a while.
You can also ask for spot checks and if they roll high you can say they see something out of the corner of their eye in a shadowy ally or door way but have nothing be there if they go to investigate.

HP Lovecraft: mountains of madness

THIS. Nobody does this type of environmental storytelling better than the folks at From Software. I think Bloodborne is a must play if you want to see a post apocalyptic city because it will give you lots of ideas.

The questions you need to answer to really get good ideas are:
Was this a sudden or gradual end?(Sudden could give you 'frozen in time' stuff like the bodies at Pompeii, gradual allows you to show the slow unravelling of society)
How long ago did it happen?(Could anyone alive remember when this wasn't a ghost town?)
Has anyone tried to move in since the old inhabitants left?
Does the doom of this city still linger in the ruins?

Do you have any preference for any of these ideas?

I remember there being some kind of series on Discovery Channel or Animal Planet about what might happen if people went suddenly extinct. A few bits I recall:
>Any housepets behind a closed door or in a cage would be trapped inside and die, outdoor pets either die fast or become a major part of the local ecosystem
>Without the upkeep, paved roads and other stone/concrete things crumble from water and temperature changes

Wasn't it History Channel's Aftermath: Population Zero?

I think there have been a few of these things; I know there was one that was "life after people", though most of this is a bit mundane compared to the sort of things OP was on about

I always enjoyed imagining a metropolis where at some point, some people behind the scenes who wanted power (such as an evil wizard, alchemist, warlord, etc) developed some kind of magical plague that at first just makes the person appear as if they have a severe case of the flu or something similar. This disease is contagious in all stages, including the seemingly flu stage. As the disease progresses, the person develops odd deformities in the form of tumors and odd growths and the person is constantly in intense pain. As the pain builds, and the person's body is warped, their mind is slowly eroded as well due to the intense pain. Eventually, the body only vaguely recognizable as human, and the person has gone completely mad from pain, attacking anything that moves. When the person is eventually killed, it explodes and leaves a poisonous cloud that infects anyone that breaths it in.

As the plague was never seen before, there was no known cure other than strong magical intervention as the plague was developed to be resistant to all forms of dispelling it. However, due to how rapidly it spreads, anyone who was able to cure it was flooded by those seeking a cure, and due to their close proximity to the patients became infected themselves or were mobbed and killed by walking tumors.

For whatever reason the plague was released into the city (as a weapon against the city, or maybe a weapon developed for an enemy but was accidentally released into the city, whatever floats your boat), it quickly took hold and spread, the populous that were able to fled (and possibly infecting other locations as well) before the city was placed under lock down, no one being able to enter or exit and thus sealing the disease inside the city and dooming those that remained. The gruesome tumor ridden survivors roam the city, eating what they can. Once every remnant of consumable goods is eaten, the purpose of the strange growths and tumors is revealed: photosynthesis.

The diseased, maddened populace roams around the almost dead city, unable to die, waiting for either someone to release them from their torment, or to consume some poor treasure hunter that managed to sneak into the city.

Any abilities these people had before this, such as casting spells, using supernatural or extraordinary abilities, etc, are usually fully retained (except in the case of divine magic or anything that the person has to channel from another source other than him or herself), making them even deadlier to face.


I took the idea of the Afflicted from Guild Wars and translated them into my own thing for a campaign I'm running, which incidentally also has a massive metropolis that might end up facing this scenario.

I'm sure somebody prolly said this before me, but I cannot stress this suggestion enough: Read The Mountains of Madness. It is exactly what you are looking for. It describes a large, abandoned, and forgotten city very well. The atmosphere is amazing.